Also, some things that are refrigerated here, like fruit, butter, and eggs, don't need chilling in the relatively cool climate of middle and northern Europe.

That had never ever occurred to me.

My fridge fits under the worktop and is built in with a door on the outside to match the rest of the kitchen units. It has three shelves, a couple of salad boxes under the bottom shelf and space in the door for storing eggs, milk bottles, etc. They're the most usual type of fridge you'd find here - American style fridges aren't common although you can get them.

'Big' fridges, ie, about 6 feet tall, are usually fridge freezers - half of it is a fridge and half a freezer, like this:

Lots of people have those.

Mine are separate - I have an under-worktop freezer the same size as my fridge with three drawers in it.

This picture is very similar to what we have, except it only has three drawers in the freezer-section, rather than four. I live in a house share of 4 people and we don't share any groceries (so there's 4 sets of milk, margarine, etc. going at the same time) as well as whatever else we put in there. We still have plenty of room left over though, enough that we managed to fit half a wedding cake in there once.

My parents have one of a similar size for just the two of them, but they also have a big chest freezer in the shed. They grow so much fruit and veg in the garden they can't eat it fast enough so need to freeze it before it goes off, then they spread it out over the winter.

OK, this just stuns me. One reason I'm curious about this is my DH and I are discussing building a weekend/future retirement home and plan to make it as energy efficient as possible. One suggestion we've received is about downsizing appliances. While I'm happy to do so for the dishwasher, washing machine and dryer, I'm having a difficult time with the fridge.

Last night we "inventoried" the condiments in the fridge door shelves. Between the large number of asian style sauces, salsas, pepper sauces, jams/jellies, capers, pickles, olives, relish, chtuney, and mustards, we have about 40 items. And none were things that won't get used. Maybe not weekly but they'll all be used up before they expire. And all of my friends and relatives fridges are similar if they do a lot of home cooking.

Are we just condiment crazy?

Maybe a little bit

I don't have a lot of condiments in my fridge but then I don't really use them. I've got some mayonnaise and a bottle of salad dressing (that I also don't use actually, I'm not sure why I have it!).

A lot of the things you list there aren't things that I would refrigerate anyway. Jams and mustard, for example, live in the cupboard here.

Typical contents of my fridge are some milk, some cheese, a tub of low fat spread, a bagged salad, maybe a few veg that I've bought to go into dishes over the week, perhaps some cold meats for sandwiches and usually a panful of whatever I cooked the night before that I'm having for lunch over the next couple of days, so my under-worktop type is plenty big enough for all that. Things like chicken and meat to go into casseroles live in the freezer and I defrost them as I need them, unless I'm going to use them within a day or two of buying then they go in the fridge.

One thing that really does bug me about my fridge is that the salad boxes are underneath the bottom shelf - the shelf itself serves as the 'lid' for them - so to get to them you have to remove what's on the shelf. Unless I'm using it all wrong (probably one for the 'retrospectively obvious things' thread), that's really bad design, so I tend not to bother using them at all.

One thing that really does bug me about my fridge is that the salad boxes are underneath the bottom shelf - the shelf itself serves as the 'lid' for them - so to get to them you have to remove what's on the shelf. Unless I'm using it all wrong (probably one for the 'retrospectively obvious things' thread), that's really bad design, so I tend not to bother using them at all.

I've never seen them structured like that. Yes, the bottom shelf is usually the lid but the 'boxes' are a drawer which slides out so you don't need to touch anything on that bottom sehlf to access the contents.

One thing that really does bug me about my fridge is that the salad boxes are underneath the bottom shelf - the shelf itself serves as the 'lid' for them - so to get to them you have to remove what's on the shelf. Unless I'm using it all wrong (probably one for the 'retrospectively obvious things' thread), that's really bad design, so I tend not to bother using them at all.

I've never seen them structured like that. Yes, the bottom shelf is usually the lid but the 'boxes' are a drawer which slides out so you don't need to touch anything on that bottom sehlf to access the contents.

Yeah, usually they are but the ones in my fridge sit in a dip, so you can't pull them forward. I think what you're supposed to do is slide the front of the shelf out instead - it's sort of in two bits, if that makes sense - but I can't seem to get it to work properly so I just don't bother. It's not a big deal - there's room to put my veg and stuff on the shelves, but it is a bit annoying.